


Watson's Daughter

by Black_Crystal_Dragon



Category: Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: Babies, Death in Childbirth, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Minor Character Death, Other minor characters mentioned - Freeform, Past Mary Morstan/John Watson, Pre-Slash, Sherlock Holmes Being a Good Friend, Sherlock Holmes is good with kids, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-02
Updated: 2010-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:07:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25599298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Black_Crystal_Dragon/pseuds/Black_Crystal_Dragon
Summary: Mary Watson dies in childbirth. Watson has to raise their daughter alone. Except, when he moves back into Baker Street, he isn't exactly alone.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 5
Kudos: 27





	Watson's Daughter

**Author's Note:**

> I want to say before I start that I'm not a huge fan of killing off female characters to give male characters reasons to angst. (ACD killed her off first, but that's no defence.) Apart from that aspect of it, I quite like this fic. I remember it being fun to write.
> 
> Written in response to a prompt on the (now purged) sherlockkink Livejournal community. I said at the time, 'It wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it.'
> 
> Archived to AO3 in July 2020.

When a knock came on Holmes’s in the middle of the night, he expected it to be Scotland Yard. As he waited for Mrs Hudson to make herself decent, answer the door and lead his visitor upstairs, he pondered the data he might be presented with. Since they had sent someone to his door so late, he suspected a grisly murder of the kind that would shock all of London.

He heard two treads on the stairs and settled himself into a suitable position in which to be found. A few moments later, there was a knock on the door. He took the pipe from his mouth and called, “Enter.”

The door opened and a young man shuffled into the dimly lit room, looking nervously about him until he found Holmes. He heard Mrs Hudson beat a hasty retreat without revealing herself.

“I’m sorry to have woken you, sir,” the runner said, although Holmes knew that it was fairly obvious that he had not been to bed. He held up a hand.

“No need to apologise; I was awake. Have you been sent by the Yard?”

“No, sir,” he replied, a slight frown of confusion wrinkling his forehead. “I came from Cavendish Place. The midwife sent me.”

Holmes’s own brow furrowed instantly at that. He knew before the boy continued that the news would be bad. If a midwife was at Cavendish Place in the middle of the night when Mary Watson was only in her seventh month of confinement, the outcome was highly unlikely to be fortunate.

“I am sorry, sir, but the news is bad. I have been told to inform you that Mrs Watson has passed away. Doctor Watson asked that you were sent for.”

Holmes felt as though his heart had physically twisted. Unused to such an extreme of emotion, he placed his hand on his chest above it in surprise. It was sad, of course, that Mary was dead; if nothing else, it was a waste of her potential. His thoughts, however, lay with Watson, who would doubtless be devastated. He nodded once before springing into action, throwing off his housecoat and going about the room to grab various articles of clothing.

“Very well,” he said as he set to work dressing himself to a standard Watson would find suitably respectable. “Run down to the street and see if there is a cab to be had.”

The runner obeyed, though it was unlikely there would be any carriages to be had in Baker Street at this time of night. As he buttoned his waistcoat, Holmes made a few calculations; at a swift pace, he could be at Cavendish Place in twenty minutes. That meant that Watson would have been without him for at least fifty. It was not acceptable, but it would have to do. He fastened the last button, and was struck by his own sense of dire urgency as he hurried out of his rooms and flung himself down the stairs. He grabbed his coat on his way out of the door, letting it slam behind him without a thought for Mrs Hudson. His thoughts were already twenty minutes away, with Watson.

\----

Holmes arrived at Cavendish Place out of breath, but within twenty minutes. He rapped sharply on the door and was let in by a grey-faced maid, who recognised him from his infrequent visits and gestured towards the stairs without a word. He wrestled out of his coat and tossed it over the banister rail as he mounted the stairs.

At the top, the midwife was waiting outside the master bedroom with her hands clasped. She was a prim, older woman with a kindly eyes and a professional demeanour. She nodded at Holmes.

“He is in with her,” she said softly, gesturing at the door to the master bedroom, which was closed. “I made her look respectable.”

“The child?” Holmes asked; he needed to be in possession of all the facts before he went in to see Watson, to avoid hurting the man further.

“A daughter. Alive, though he barely knows it,” the midwife told him, shaking her head sadly. “There is a nursery; I have fed her and put her in the crib.”

Holmes nodded, then stepped past the woman and let himself into the bedroom without knocking.

Mary’s corpse lay on the bed, her face bloodless against the white pillows. There was a hint of perfume in the air, perhaps to mask the heavy scent of blood that permeated the whole of the room. Watson was hunched beside her on a chair, his fingers clutching at her hand as if doing so could draw her soul back into the empty body beside him. When he heard the door, he looked up sharply, and the expression of relief that passed over his face at the sight of his friend made Holmes’s chest ache. He crossed the room in a few strides, first pulling Watson to his feet and then impulsively into a tight embrace. He stiffened, but Holmes’s hand on the back of his head seemed to sooth him, and he allowed Holmes to press his face into the crook of his shoulder.

The seconds ticked by and Watson was still, his breath warm even through the layers of cloth covering Holmes’s shoulder. Then the last of his barriers finally crumpled and sobbed against Holmes, leaning heavily against his friend and clutching desperately at his clothes. Holmes held him patiently, waiting for the first passionate shock of grief to pass.

When Watson’s breathing finally calmed somewhat, he pulled away of his own volition and hastily wiped his eyes before he looked at Holmes.

“I am so very sorry,” Holmes told him, trying to project as much sincerity as he could muster. Mary may have taken his friend from him more than he had liked, but he had never wished her dead. Watson nodded wordlessly and Holmes could see that it was because he could not speak for fear of once again breaking down. After a moment, Watson’s eyes drifted back towards the bed and Holmes cleared his throat, catching at his arm and turning him away. “Come now, old man.”

“But Mary – I should not leave her,” Watson protested weakly as Holmes began to steer him towards the door.

“Mary is no longer in this room,” Holmes said, for once managing to be gentle because this was Watson, and he looked so ragged around the edges, as if someone had taken his life and ripped it apart at the seams. Holmes could hardly blame him. However, the loss of his wife was not the only momentous occurrence of the evening; he had also gained a daughter, and needed to be reminded of that fact. They reached the door and Watson hesitated; he squeezed the doctor’s arm. “Wherever she might be now, I can assure you that she no longer requires your company.”

Watson brought his hand to his face to cover a sob that shook his whole body. Holmes opened the door and he shook his head.

“You have spent enough time with the dead, Watson,” Holmes told him firmly. “Now is the time for the living.”

Finally, reluctantly, Watson stepped out into the corridor. Holmes closed the door behind them, then looked Watson up and down appraisingly. He still looked shaken and leant heavily against the wall with his eyes firmly closed, but he was breathing deeply, probably savouring the clean air.

Satisfied that his friend was doing as well as could be expected, Holmes took his arm once again. “Come with me, Watson.”

He paid Watson’s stammering protests no heed as he guided the other man down the corridor towards the nursery. He pushed him into the room first, then stepped inside himself and went around lighting some of the gas lamps. Watson stood in the centre of the room, looking about him as if he were lost in his own home.

Once satisfied that the room was suitably lit, Holmes went over to the crib and peered in. As the midwife had said, the baby was lying inside sleeping peacefully in a swathe of blankets. She was tiny, due to her premature birth, but otherwise seemed healthy as far as he could tell. He glanced up at Watson.

“You have a remarkably ugly child, Watson,” he informed him, deliberately being insensitive in the hopes of shocking some feeling other than grief out of his friend. Besides, the baby, like all newborns, was distressingly ruddy and its chubby face was screwed up; Holmes had to wonder how women could coo over such looks and call them angelic.

Although his words did not have quite the intended effect, they did bring a frown to Watson’s face and he finally approached the cradle. He peered in at the diminutive form and Holmes heard his breath catch. He watched Watson watching the baby for a few moments.

He looked utterly fascinated. The grief was still quite evident in his face, but for the moment it was overlaid by fatherly pride and a fraction of the pride and joy he ought to be allowed to feel in full. He blinked, and liquid spilled from his eyes and down his cheeks. He quickly dashed them away, clearing his throat in embarrassment.

“You are wrong, Holmes,” he said as he reached into the cradle and gently stroked his fingers over the baby’s head, catching the blankets and pushing them back a little further. “She is beautiful.”

Holmes allowed himself a very small smile, glad that he had at least momentarily distracted Watson from his loss. He looked back down at the child; her hair was a shock of black, ironically more reminiscent of Holmes himself than of either parent, and even without seeing them he knew that her eyes, like those of all newborns, would be blue. Otherwise, she looked like any other infant to him.

He decided against informing Watson of that, however, and instead asked, “Have you thought of a name?”

“She will be called Mary,” Watson said firmly, withdrawing his hand where he had been stroking across the soft skin of her cheek. He would have been a fiercely protective father in any case, but now Holmes could foresee him fussing over the slightest detail of his daughter’s life. He smiled a little when he saw Watson looking at him as if daring him to argue, and nodded his approval.

\----

The move back to Baker Street was inevitable. Cavendish Place was too full of memories of Mary for Watson to bear, and although he did try for several months to live there it eventually became too difficult. Initially, he had told Holmes that he would not require his old rooms for long and would find other lodgings as soon as possible, but as the weeks stretched into months, his moving out became a distant fantasy.

There were incidents, of course. It could not be as it had been before, now that they shared the space not only with each other and a dog, but also with a baby and a nanny. In the early days, Holmes had woken Mary a few times by playing his violin at odd hours, but her crying had turned out to be a far more effective deterrent to midnight recitals than anything Watson had ever tried. He complained frequently about the smell of her nappies and her crying when he was trying to concentrate.

Watson, for his part, fretted endlessly about chemical fumes and worried that she might get into the detective’s rooms and ingest something lethal. Then there was the fact that Holmes was a terribly bad influence: a fact pointed out to him at least twice a week by Mrs Hudson and the nanny. He lived in hope that Holmes at least knew that experimenting upon a child was wrong, but occasionally the fear would come upon him that one day Gladstone would not be around and Holmes would turn to Mary as a substitute.

However, an incident which occurred two months after his retreat to Baker Street went a long way towards assuaging the wildest of his fears, at least.

He woke in the middle of the night, hearing Mary cry, but knew that the nanny was more than capable and so did nothing but listen for the crying to stop. He only had to wait for a few seconds; he smiled to himself and closed his eyes again, satisfied that his daughter was in capable hands. Then there came a knock on his door and a muffled voice called, “Doctor Watson!”

His heart flipped as he recognised the nanny’s voice. In a moment he was out of bed and pulling open the door. “Yes?”

“It’s Mary, Doctor Watson,” she told him tremulously. “She’s not in her crib, and she couldn’t possibly have climbed out!”

Watson felt his knees momentarily weaken with the horror of it. Before the woman could say any more, he was rushing down the corridor and into the little room set aside as the nursery. She was not anywhere to be seen. His heart pounded in his chest. He rushed out again, heading this time towards Holmes’s rooms, in case he had heard something.

He burst in without knocking, and was confronted with a scene so startlingly unexpected that he could barely believe his eyes. Holmes was pacing the floor with Mary cradled in the crook of one arm, holding a bottle of milk to her lips with his other hand. He broke off in mid sentence at Watson’s entrance and came to a halt.

“Holmes,” Watson croaked, his overwhelming relief at seeing his daughter suddenly giving way to a whole host of new worries.

“Watson,” Holmes replied cheerfully, resuming his pacing. “I took the liberty of preparing the child’s midnight feed, since I heard her start to fret a short while ago and guessed that she was hungry.

“Holmes,” Watson said again, more insistently this time. He dreaded to think what might be in the bottle along with the milk. Holmes wouldn’t mean any harm, of course, but the results would be no less catastrophic than if he had meant to hurt the child, if she drank something dangerous. Holmes gave him a reproachful look as he passed.

“My dear Watson,” he said with a deep sigh. “Do you honestly believe that I would place something you love into any sort of danger? Have some faith, man. The milk is warm, but not hot; I have tested it against my own skin, just as you and the nanny do. I added nothing, and before I began I made sure to wash my hands of all possible pollutants.”

Watson blinked at him in surprise, not expecting him to have taken such care. Holmes approached him, shaking his head.

“Really, Watson; what do you take me for?”

In his arms, Mary released the emptied bottle and gurgled happily. Holmes handed Watson the bottle and lifted Mary up onto his shoulder, stroking her blonde curls gentle. The black hair she had been born with had fallen out within a month of her birth, to be replaced with curls as fine and pale as her mother’s, and Holmes seemed to love touching it. Not three days ago, Watson had come up from seeing a patient and found Holmes in the nursery, running the bristles of a soft brush through her hair while she giggled on his lap. She settled her head onto his shoulder, apparently not bothered in the slightest by the smell, stuck her thumb into her mouth and closed her eyes.

Holmes was looking at him with the beginnings of a smirk on his face, and Watson realised that he had been caught staring. He shook himself and set the bottle down on the nearest table. “I should put her back to bed.”

“Indeed,” Holmes said. He stepped closer and then, with infinite care so as not to jostle her, passed the dozing infant into Watson’s arms. He stroked her hair one last time, then turned away and went back to the book which had been laid out open on the seat of his armchair; he had evidently been reading it when Mary had disturbed him, and now he picked it up again and continued to read as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

For Watson, however, it was impossible to pretend that he was not surprised. Holmes barely managed to take care of himself, and for him to take such trouble to take care of Mary when she needed something was frankly amazing to him. It was also hugely reassuring; he no longer needed to worry that the detective begrudged her presence in his home. He smiled and cuddled his sleeping daughter close.

“Thank you, Holmes.”

“Well, why should you and Nanny wake to deal with the child’s whims, when I am already awake and available to do so?” Holmes asked. Watson took it to be a rhetorical question and simply returned the other man’s smile before going to put his little girl to bed.

\----

They had some interesting reactions to the baby. Lestrade had called Watson a madman for allowing Holmes within fifty yards of his offspring, and continued to shake his head disapprovingly whenever he saw Holmes with Mary. Constable Clark had immediately got down to her level, forgetting entirely about the case he had come to request Holmes’s assistance with, and tickled her under the chin, cooing nonsense.

By far the best reaction, however, was Irene Adler’s when she inevitably returned to pester Holmes. This time, she had at least had the courtesy to enter via the front door, even if she did let herself in and sneak up the stairs in an attempt to surprise them.

At the time, they were engaged in attempting to find Holmes a new case. Or rather, Watson was scouring the papers for crimes that might appeal to his friend, and Holmes was plucking at his violin. Mary was sitting on the rug between them, playing with a set of blocks with letters painted onto each face. When Miss Adler threw open the door and flounced inside, only Holmes did not look up in surprise.

“Miss Adler,” Holmes said dryly, still plucking out seemingly random chords. “I thought I recognised your tread upon the stairs.”

The woman smiled, looking around the room and noting first Watson’s presence, and then Mary’s as she stepped forward and her dress toppled a small stack of alphabet blocks. “Sherlock!” she cried, evidently shocked. “You have a baby!”

“Yes, pretty little thing, isn’t she?” he replied amiably, finally looking away from his violin to glance at Mary and smile. Mary picked up one of the blocks that had been knocked over and screwed up her pretty face in evident annoyance; Miss Adler stepped back, and Mary carefully began her stack again.

Miss Adler looked between the two men suspiciously. Watson hid behind the large sheets of his newspaper; he wanted nothing to do with this conversation. After a moment, Miss Adler asked in a rather bemused tone, “Who does she belong to?”

“She’s mine and Watson’s,” he said. Behind his newspaper, Watson raised his eyebrows, surprised by the fact that Holmes was so quick to claim Mary as his as well. Before he could comment, the detective continued, “I fancy she favours him in looks.”

At that, Watson had to hastily stifle a laugh.

“Well, quite,” Miss Adler said. She still sounded a little dumbstruck; but then, Watson reflected, he would probably feel the same, if he were not intimately acquainted with the situation and walked into the rooms of one Sherlock Holmes and found a small child.

A few seconds later, he heard Holmes get up and peered out to see him getting down onto his knees beside Mary. He and Miss Adler watched as he gently took the block from Mary was straining to place on top of her pile, and carefully set it in its place for her. She had left swiftly after that, without asking further questions or even explaining why she had come in the first place. Apparently the idea of Holmes successfully coexisting with a child was enough to distract her from her purposes. Watson filed that away for future reference.

Once she was safely out of the room, Watson finally emerged from behind the newspaper. Holmes, who was now cross-legged on the rug, holding Mary upright on her feet so that she could reach to place more blocks without overbalancing, grinned at him. Watson could not help but grin back.

\----

**Epilogue**

It was an ordinary day, a few months after Mary’s first birthday. They had been living in Baker Street for a little under a year; Watson’s practice was flourishing, especially since Holmes had stopped practicing his marksmanship in the house, and Mary was starting to toddle about by herself without the need to hang onto the furniture to stay upright. Holmes had solved a case recently enough to still be euphoric over his achievements, and Watson had a rare afternoon without patients to look forward to. He had recently been neglecting his writing in favour of spending time with his daughter, and the free afternoon would give him an opportunity to pen his latest adventure with Holmes.

Of course, his part in the adventure was rather less dangerous than it had been in the past, before he had become a father, because he had his daughter to think of; however, his readership did not know that, and so he embellished Holmes’s accounts of dare-devil chases and high-speed fist-fights to include himself. He was in the middle of such a passage when Holmes walked into his room with Mary on his hip. Watson finished his sentence and looked up.

Holmes deposited Mary on his lap. Watson instinctively wrapped his arms loosely around his daughter and looked up curiously at Holmes. He found that he could not quite read his friend’s expression.

“Watson,” Holmes announced. “Mary has something she would like to say.”

“If she has broken some of your laboratory equipment again, she can’t confess it to me, Holmes. She hasn’t learned to talk yet,” Watson sighed, closing his eyes in frustration. “You know, you really should close your door! You have dangerous chemicals in there!”

Holmes pursed his lips, but when he spoke his voice was soft. “Just listen, would you, old man.”

Then he nodded at Mary, an expectant look on his face. She blinked solemnly at him, then looked up at her father for a moment with the intensity of expression all small children are capable of before returning her gaze to Holmes. He nodded again, encouragingly Watson thought, and she turned back to him.

She smiled sweetly, then said quite clearly, “I love you, Papa.”

Watson’s heart skipped and then swelled immediately with pride and delight. He felt the sting of tears behind his eyes and hastily blinked them away, scooping Mary up and holding her tightly to his chest, kissing her hair and murmuring how much he loved her until she giggled and squirmed in his arms, pushing at him with her chubby arms. Only then did he release her and turn to address Holmes.

The other man was smiling at him, and for once Watson did not care that it bordered on a smirk. Grinning, he said, “You taught her that?”

“Of course,” he replied with a small shrug. “She was not the most attentive of pupils, but I believe there may yet be hope for her as an academic. Perhaps with age, her attention span will lengthen and she will be a better student.”

“Perhaps,” Watson laughed. He got to his feet, swinging Mary into his arms as he did so, and went over to Holmes. “Thank you.”

“You are most welcome, Watson,” Holmes told him warmly, reaching out to clasp his shoulder. With his other hand, he lightly patted Mary on the head. “And you have done well.” She babbled something unintelligible at him and Holmes’s eyes narrowed. “You are not, however, to take this to mean that your communication skills are not lacking. They are in dire need of improvement.”

By the time he had finished speaking, both Mary and Watson were chuckling, which made him smile. Watson touched his arm lightly. “I’m sure that between us we can manage that.”


End file.
